Thursday, August 8, 1901
A new war seems to have broken out between the French and the Moors in Northern Africa and a bloody battle was fought last week.
Bernard Slaven put a tin roof on Capt. J. C. Gay’s house on Elk last week. This is one of the largest dwellings in Pocahontas County, if not the very largest.
One of Marlinton’s prosperous citizens has put up such a large double porch that some future visitor will remark what a nice house has been built to that porch.
Quite a wagon train passed Marlinton Thursday freighted with supplies for Smith & Whiting’s camp. Work in these camps is being resumed vigorously.
One of the best-bred flocks of sheep in the county is to be sold at the Administrator of H. H. McClintic’s sale at Beaver Dam.
What might have been a serious accident was narrowly averted last Sunday, when Miss Mabel Bird fell from a spring wagon on the Stony Creek Road and was dragged several yards before the team could be stopped.
On July 27, a Hungarian couple was married at McKeesport, Penn. The Hungarian custom is that the gentlemen guests pay well to dance with the bride. In this case, it was a dollar per dance. The dancing was kept up from Saturday to early Monday morning. During the 95th round, the bride fell exhausted and died Monday evening, having danced in $94 in less than 48 hours.
A newlywed editor and a confirmed old bachelor editor have had an editorial scrap to this effect. The newly married one inquires: “What is the difference between a honeycomb, a honeymoon and a pretty girl?” The bachelor replies, “a honeycomb is a small cell, a honeymoon is a sell, and a pretty girl is damsel.”
There is a levelheaded doctor at Parsons, if it be true, that a young man after receiving a prescription for nervous trouble and promising to pay for it very soon, asked the doctor to lend him money to pay the druggist to fill the prescription. The doctor thereupon tore up the prescription and gave it as his opinion that a nerve tonic was not needed on such premises.
GREEN BANK
We had a fine rain last Sunday evening which was badly needed for corn had begun to curl up on account of the two weeks’ drouth. The corn crop bids fair to be fine, but wheat is light. Hay is good where not injured by worms.
J. H. Curry is expecting the smallpox any time, having had a chance. He has been vaccinated twice and thinks he does not want to be again. Anyone having smallpox should stay at home.
Our farmers are mowing their grass which is a fine crop this season and we are having fine weather for the business, but our roads – we have none! Just water gutters where we once had roads. No work being done.
Died, July 26, 1901, in Durbin, a child of Mr. and Mrs. C. P. Kerr, aged about 2 years. Rev. J. W. McNeil preached the funeral Saturday at the church near Traveler’s Repose, after which the remains were interred in the cemetery near the church to await the resurrection morning.
FROM THE PACIFIC COAST
Messrs. Editors,
Through the kindness of a friend, I have received several copies of your paper, and its perusal has awakened me to a reminiscent mood which has issued into a desire to write to you, and through you to such of the friends of my boyhood as may yet be living, and as may remember the writer.
A little over 41 years ago, only a few days before the 21 years had come around which would have made a man out of me in a legal sense, I left old Greenbank to try my fortune in Missouri, the then “far west” and only once since (in 1882) have had the pleasure of going back to the old home; and then but for a day or two…
I recognize that most of the names in your paper are of a younger generation that has grown up since my day, but they are nonetheless familiar, and if I don’t know them, nor they me, I did know their grandfathers and grandmothers and in many instances their fathers and mothers, and had many a big time with them at apple butter boilings, or at the mountain sugar camps, aye, and on the old schoolhouse grounds…
Amongst some of the names I came across I recognized a few that were contemporaneous with myself, notable Maj. J. C. Arbogast now, but “afo de wah” it was Crof.
Crof and I were chums. We went to the same school and were in the same classes from as far back as my mind will run, but Crof is older than I am and he needn’t try to deny it.
Then there is Dr. J. P. Moomau and Nannie, his wife; George Kerr, a cousin; Henry Hull, another cousin…
Amongst the names that sound so natural, I find the Burners, Yeagers, Heaveners, Gillespies, Suttons, Slavens, Lockridges, McLaughlins, oh well, why enumerate?…
I can see all the old places as plainly as if I had only left them yesterday. You must excuse me for regarding Huntersville as still the county seat, notwithstanding you seem to have appropriated the honor. I can’t see it…
W. W. Kerr
Correction: In last week’s article “Drowning At Buckeye,” Joe Hannah’s age was incorrect. He was 19 years old, not 10 years old.
